ethereal
by bonfires
Summary: Sometimes, the good guys have to lose. Wishing just isn't enough. Hayner/Naminé.


**Author's Note: **T for slightly indecent language and an overly-melodramatic plot. Just a one-shot of a hypothetical situation I came up with when I wanted to procrastinate on my homework + listening to sad songs, haha. If there's any inaccuracy, it's probably because I forgot some details here and there. I need to write about more happy topics.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix, or Disney. They belong to their respective owners.

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><p><strong>Ethereal<strong>

There was no way someone could be a winner without being afraid of losing.

This much Hayner was certain of, raising his bat to both to the audience triumphantly, spiked with adrenaline and the pride of a battle fought to the finish. He was beaten to a pulp by Seifer; twenty seconds ago, the prospect of victory was but a glorified fantasy. His head thumped painfully in recall, heart in throat and ears ringing with double-echo, but one strong swing ended it all.

It was already in the past, and he was facing the present. The loser spitefully glared at the sandy-haired blonde with hollowed irises in humiliation, and Hayner returned the favor by howling hysterically. It was promptly cut short when the crowd assailed him with earsplitting whoops and slams to the back, bringing stars in his eyes.

Reveling in exultant success, he nearly didn't spot the ghost of a girl staring directly at him a short distance away. There was nothing remarkable or particularly noteworthy about her. The girl had platinum blonde hair, dishwater blue eyes, and a plain, alabaster dress, to put it roughly. It could have been the description of 35% of the girls in Twilight Town, give or take the most miniscule of changes. The object that caught his attention, however, was the sketchbook she held up with outstretched palms.

Neat scrawl on a sheet of paper. They were only nonsensical, cut-and-press words to any other bystander that passed by. But to him, it was an answer he had resigned himself to never finding. He barely registered the flurry of emotions flitting in and out of his mind as he squinted to read the methodically precise handwriting.

_I know where Roxas is._

And then he was running. He threw his bat to the ground, an easily forgotten memento, and bulldozed past friends and rivals, elbowing through the spectators, and in short, leaving behind the epitome his whole life had been leading up to without a second thought.

The crowd was bunched together in molasses, immediately suppressing his movement, and in his vastly limited peripheral vision, saw the girl turn and dart from view. Cursing loudly, he shoved through the last stretch of people and sprinted after her, worn-out sneakers threatening to give out on him any second. His breath rushed quickly with exertion, energy already spent and lungs screaming for oxygen, but he only pushed on harder. The girl was nimbly quick, but so was he, and they raced around street corners and shop stands, until the two found themselves at a dead-end.

The girl spun around to face Hayner, silent and still, clutching her notebook protectively with both hands, while he leaned against a stop sign, trying to inhale the air around him without choking on it.

''Why the hell did you run?'' Hayner wheezed, holding his throbbing sides and sizing up the blonde with suspicion.

''I'm sorry. I know I came at a bad time…'' she said miserably, gazing down at the ivory straps of her sandals.

He bit back an exasperated sigh, and then waited until his thoughts cleared enough to proceed. ''The name's Hayner. And you would be?''

''Naminé,'' she answered, blinking up at him.

''So, Naminé. You know the whereabouts of my best friend, who practically no one even remembers existed. Right, it makes complete sense! Lemme' guess, you're willing to tell me where he is at the low-cost fee of 8,000 munny! What a deal!'' he snaps angrily, his face hardened in a sarcastic sneer. He wonders if it's all a sick joke planned out by Seifer's gang, trying to bring his hopes up before crushing them to pieces.

The girl winces at the retort, shrinking farther back into the wall guiltily, as if it was her fault. ''I have proof,'' she whispers, looking like all she wants is to disappear. With quivering fingers she flips back the cover, giving each drawing a cursory scan before finally selecting one and showing it to Hayner.

It feels like the floor slid out beneath him. He stares at the picture, recognition in every line and shape, a visual to the description he and his friends, Pence and Olette, had been giving any random bystander who'd listen for the past three weeks. They'd give them the same answer every time. They all thought he had gone insane, inventing an imaginary friend that was never there, and brainwashing his friends to believe it too.

His mom even took him to a psychiatrist, who repeated over and over that Roxas wasn't real and that he never existed until Hayner believed the lies too. He had just gotten over the whole ordeal like a lapse in judgment, and was beginning to move on when some random girl came and brought it all back.

''You're kidding,'' he hears himself say mutely, a shred of hope apparent in his voice. ''Where is he?''

Naminé's face falls, and she averts her eyes from the boy in shame. She shouldn't have come. She shouldn't have agreed with DiZ to personally corrupt and delete the town's data after Roxas was taken out of the equation. It had all been binary codes to her at the beginning, cold equations and motion-stopped scenes of normal life. It would never be real; it was only an illusion from the beginning, happy pretend dreams for the boy without a fairytale ending. But she was jealous all the same, watching Roxas roar in laughter with fake friends on digital clock towers eating artificial ice cream that would always stay salty-sweet.

The blonde told herself that she was only going in the town for one last run, and decided not to freeze-frame the scenes like she always did, so that the people would at least know of their demise, instead of being caught in the instant between past and future, never to move or breathe again. She hoped that Pence, Olette, and Hayner could tell the others; mob mentality was harsh to unfamiliar strangers, and they were mostly friendly.

But viewing the warped creation she helped to make a reality, she decided that Roxas's friends deserved a little dignity in knowing what fate had befallen him. The situation doesn't go the way she plans it in her head. Unfortunately, only Hayner had followed after her. She hadn't taken into account that time continued in the computer program, regardless of the edits or maintenance taking place. She didn't know that they struggled and experienced and lived just the same as their counterparts.

She didn't — she didn't know they had hearts.

''Hayner…Roxas is gone. He's never coming back.'' Naminé has to tell him that his world is ending, already in the final death throes of deletion, but the blonde finds she has no voice to say it with.

The girl squeezes her eyes shut, but it doesn't stop the boy from shaking her like a ragdoll. He doesn't yell, though. It would be better that he yelled, so she wouldn't have to think about it all. The silence is more damning than any shout would ever be.

''Oh.'' Hayner utters simply, and releases his hold on the girl. He tilts his head back and cracks up; like Naminé said the funniest thing he's ever heard in his life. ''He's dead, then. I get it now.''

And the girl cowers in the back, aware of how close the boy is to the breaking point.

''He's not dead. He's himself again,'' she desperately tries to find the words to convey it, but find that she doesn't have a reasonable explanation.

The sandy-haired boy momentarily puts his delirious frenzy on hold to stare at her like she's insane.

''You _have_ to understand, Hayner. He's still_ alive_, just — just in a different form. He's finally whole.''

He scrunches his face up in frustration. ''You mean reincarnation?''

''It is, in a way,'' she finally relents to the thought. The concept of transcending those without hearts by uniting with their Other, finding a way out of the rat maze of inexistence was infinitely better than the notion that Roxas simply disappeared. But she has no time to explain any more. The allotment of time was overestimated, and already at an end. Her words tumbled out in a rush, with a hint of panic marring them. ''But that isn't why I came.''

Hayner's poker face comes back in wariness and he bristles, cautious of any revelations she might next reveal. ''It isn't?''

''It's the end,'' Naminé murmurs under her breath.

''What was that? Speak up, I can barely hear you,'' The boy assumed that he was already so far lost in lunacy that everything the crazy girl said was starting to make sense. In his logic, it couldn't hurt to be driven to believe more absurd crap.

''You — this entire world — it's being deleted. In less than a minute, give or take, it'll be gone. There will be no trace that it ever existed.''

The blonde's mouth twists up in an unexpected moment of bitterness. ''Everyone loses. The end,'' she informs him, neither condescending or boastful.

Hayner doesn't react for about ten seconds. And then indignant protest comes, loud and harsh on her ears. ''You're a fucking nut job. I can't believe I even bothered to listen to this shit.'' He walks backwards like he's afraid of Naminé; tripping over a trash can lid and a case of empty bottles, and falling over them with a deafening crash.

The girl rushes over to him, abandoning her sketches and crayons to offer a hand to him. Her attempt at kindness, no matter how small, goes virtually unnoticed. He shrugs her hand off with a slap, the sheer force of the raw, undisguised loathing radiating off of him enough to make Naminé retract and back away as Hayner bolts.

She grabs hold of her senses enough to make her way out of the alleyway, but by that time, Hayner is long gone. Not even one person had followed the two through their running sequence; they probably expected that he was going to come back with an explanation.

Naminé was too late. It all went horribly wrong. She wished that she had one more chance, that she could have paused and rewound the scene to do it all over again, in a different way, in a different lighting, in a different conclusion. But she realized that the result would be the same, regardless of whether the people accepted their destiny willingly, or rebelled against it to the end. When all was said and done, it wouldn't matter that she tried her hardest to be the savior she wasn't, because witches only caused destruction.

She didn't fight it any longer, and decided for once, to go with the flow. As an afterthought, she remained upright with no sway in her stance, determined to watch the crowning annihilation of the world she rendered.

The buildings fell away first, clattering their way into oblivion, bricks and shards of glass shattering right through her because she wasn't included in the destruction as a mere spectator. Homes exploded into dusty wood shavings, falling away from their foundations. The surrounding scenery came away next, trees collapsing into each other to form crimson blazes in the skyline, their leaves curling inward from green to red to black. Ashen, all the grass and flowers shriveled up and perished. Animals raced wildly back and forth yowling, the very Armageddon at their heels.

Naminé couldn't hear the screams of the inhabitants, but felt a deep ululation underneath her feet as the ground itself shrieked in the agony of inexistence. It desperately tried to hold itself together, but ripped at its very seams. Like a surgeon opening up a fresh wound, the world wailed defiantly against the digits that raised it up, only to cut it down when it was deemed useless. The sky was the last to go, just like she programmed it to, signifying an inexplicable nostalgia whenever she took the time to gaze upwards.

Now she despairingly turned her eyes to it as the atmosphere shivering from a golden, blood-red sunset to near transparency. The sun fought to exist, beams of light casting one last shower before it cracked to reveal darkness at its very core. It was like a nightmare come to life to jest at her attempts, throwing them all down a drain for her stupidity. It would have been more humane of her to spare the inhabitants of the town from this brutal eradication by freezing their data. She couldn't stop staring. Finally, as the heavens drained themselves devoid of light and sound, blue binary symbols took their place, morphing the environment in mercilessly cruel, mechanical glows and clicks. When they had done their work, the world was gone. Wiped clean of memory, of any trace that something used to exist there, even if it was only a fabricated lie.

She saw a fleeting glimpse of eternity reflected in that minute. And in a blinding flash, it was gone. Personalities and hopes bleached from their digital proponents were shoved in the trash, never to be seen or heard from again. She would always remember, though, and remorse tormented her small frame. The image stayed with her, burned across her closed eyelids, even after the white screen reloaded and she was back in front of computer, which carried the message, '_CORRUPTION OF DATA COMPLETE_' across it in huge bold text, incrimination in its entirety. And then, only then, did she cry.

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><p>Staring up at the night sky, Kairi speedily covered her ears at the popping sound of fireworks, hyper-aware of the vibrations they made across the ground as they spiraled to the stars in flaring sparks.<p>

''Are you okay?'' Sora and Riku mouthed in unison, staring back at her in concern.

The redhead nodded, disentangling her hands from her ears, but cringed slightly every time the fluorescent rockets caused a small vibration underneath her feet. She thought nothing of it.


End file.
